


Leave All Your Longing Behind

by Anefi



Series: Anefi's Transformers Works [14]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Atrocities, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:42:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27650840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anefi/pseuds/Anefi
Summary: Once in a while, Ratchet gets a message from an old contact number, no name attached. He’s never responded. This time won’t be any different.Until it is.
Relationships: Drift | Deadlock/Ratchet
Series: Anefi's Transformers Works [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1918825
Comments: 4
Kudos: 42





	Leave All Your Longing Behind

Ratchet was wrenched out of deep recharge and defrag by a high-level alert. Errors sparked in his programming from half-completed processes even as he groaned and sat up, and then groaned again when he saw what time it was. He sent an acknowledging ping to the medbay and rubbed a hand over his face.

The medic on duty, Solderus, sent back a questioning ping and an admonition to get some recharge, like he promised, before the next transport came in from the front.

Something had sure as slag pulled him out. It was a measure of how tired he was – and how long it had been – that it took him a few sluggish breems to figure it out. The comm code was ancient, as old as the war, only ever shared with one other person. There were a paltry few messages on record. All the same.

 _Run_.

Reading those simple, unadorned glyphs, it felt like a vise clamped around his spark chamber had slowly started to squeeze. Ratchet set a pulsing countdown on his HUD for sixty joors from the timestamp of receipt, plugged himself back into the recharge unit, turned over, and forced himself offline.

The next transport packed with casualties arrived more or less on schedule, but when Ratchet stood up from triage with energon up to his elbow joints and surveyed the medical bay, it wasn’t even full. He snapped at a nurse. “Where’s everyone else?”

“The evac ship was only half full,” Ampoule said. “The tail’s singed; maybe the convoy got hit.”

Ratchet had seen that kind of thing before—but it usually meant more ships limping toward the safety of a secure medial base, and different types of injuries in the survivors. He pulled up the roster of other new arrivals and went to find Prowl.

The halls of Savilan-113 had been originally dug through the asteroid by the local insectiform K’ktch’th, so the bulkheads had a strange, glassy ripple in the iron-rich rock, and tremors of small launches and running platoons carried across the base. When he pushed through the directed chaos of the command deck, Prowl took one look at him and cleared three staffers from a meeting room so they could talk in private. Prowl looked tired, too, but his black and white plating was pristine as ever, and his optics were tracking without a stutter.

“The medevac transport was the last ship to evacuate,” Prowl said, “before the planet imploded.”

At first, Ratchet thought his audials had malfunctioned. “Did you say _imploded_?”

“Yes.”

Ratchet blinked. “I know Shockwave’s not in this sector, and I thought Killmaster—”

Prowl had a reputation for being unfeeling, which Ratchet knew wasn’t true, but he certainly wasn’t in the habit of giving away his thoughts on his face or in his field. Still. Ratchet had known him a long time. There was the slightest shift in his tensors, the slightest tightening around his mouth.

“Prowl,” Ratchet said.

“A call was made,” Prowl said.

“ _Prowl_.” He wanted to reach for denial, but the war had been too long. It had all been burnt away.

“The Decepticons overran our blockade, and the ruling Palamer host declared an alliance with them. A foothold that strong, in this region, with their resources, would have—”

 _Billions_ of lives. “Optimus would never—”

“He was there,” Prowl said. “Ratchet. It’s done.”

The gravity of the asteroid was just barely strong enough to keep the Autobots from bothering with artificial generators, but Ratchet knew that wasn’t why he felt unmoored. In the grand scheme of the war, it wasn’t the first planet utterly destroyed, or even the hundredth. But at that moment, on that cycle, with the countdown blinking in his peripheral vision and the vise on his spark, it was enough. It was too much.

“I’m going to take some leave,” he said numbly.

Prowl nodded slowly, scrutinizing him. “If the medical bay is less busy than anticipated, now would be a good time.”

There was a packed back under the recharge unit, and Ratchet had never been much for personal possessions beyond what he could lock in a secret compartment of his subspace. He dumped his files to Relay, updated his schedule on the base mainframe, and jumped on a shuttle to the nearest transfer station.

As the countdown ticked toward zero, he opened his side of the private channel. For the first time, he replied.

 _Run_ , he agreed.

The countdown reset.


End file.
